Dane DeHaan talks Green Goblin in 'Amazing Spider-Man 2'

Onscreen of late, Dane DeHaan has been wrestling with rich-daddy issues.

In the Beat Generation drama Kill Your Darlings, he was the ostracized son of a “good” family, who used Columbia University as an entry-point into artistic nihilism, homosexuality and drug use.

And in the somewhat larger-scale The Amazing Spider-Man 2, he’s Harry Osborn, Peter Parker’s erstwhile best pal, whose rejection by his industrialist dad Norman Osborn (and other “issues”) lead him to his destiny as Spider-Man’s arch enemy the Green Goblin.

All of which is no reflection on his real life, the one in which DeHaan’s computer programmer dad is proud and pretty much geeked-out over his son’s role as a Spider-Man villain. “He’s a total fanboy, for sure,” DeHaan, 28, says with a laugh.

“The short answer is it’s imagination,” says the DeHaan. “I’m a firm believer that you can get yourself to believe something is actually happening. Unfortunately in today’s society, people’s imagination is taken away from them on so many levels.

“I can be angry onscreen, actually angry. But it’s a false reality, and my anger is at Spider-Man.”

Of course, there was a lot they didn’t cover at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Among them, wearing a 50-pound battle suit in a closed studio, heated by lights to a temperature of 110 degrees.

“It took an hour to get into,” he says of his Green Goblin suit. And they were pouring ice water into that suit, and by the time they called ‘Action,’ the water was boiling. And there was wire work, and time on gliders. But that’s all part of it. We get asked how hard is it to be these bad guys. But it’s also like who cares? We get to be bad guys! Jamie (Foxx) gets to be Electro and I get to be the Green Goblin. And that’s pretty exciting.”

You get the impression that finding Harry Osborn’s tortured soul is closer to his heart than the hardware is. But DeHaan says, “You have to honour every single step of the movie as a part of the whole. It was just as important to me to honour Harry and bring him into modern day as it was to bring the Green Goblin into the modern day.”

For the messed-up rich-boy Harry, “I went to the comic books for an understanding of who Harry Osborn has always been in the Spider-Man universe and what he stands for. And then I find a way to fit that archetype into modern day society.

“To me he’d no longer be the guy wearing suits all day and slicking his hair back. He was the kind of guy who’d be wearing a very fashionable haircut and living in Williamsburg (a hipster neighbourhood in Brooklyn). I think where that type of person would fit in today’s modern New York City society.”

DeHaan is aware he may over-think his roles compared to most of his peers. Chris Cooper – who plays Norman Osborn – is famously critical of today’s young actors. And Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a reunion for DeHaan, who was in the movie Amigo with Cooper in 2010.

“He studied with Stella Adler,” DeHaan says. “I remember when we were making Amigo together and having coffee and that’s what our conversation was – how almost every single young actor that’s in the public eye right now is not classically trained.

“But I am. So we hit it off and we spent a lot of time talking about the work. I am so thankful I got to talk to him twice.”